Weekend Box Office: ‘Coco’ Is Hot in Theaters

It was a busy Thanksgiving weekend in theaters, with business up about four percent from the same weekend last year. Leading the charge was Coco, Pixar’s latest animated feature, which earned an estimated $49 million over the three-day weekend (and a total of $71 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday), easily knocking Justice Leagueout of the top spot. Here’s the full box office chart:

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

Total

1

Coco

$49,022,000

$12,295

$71,195,000

2

Justice League

$40,730,000 (-56%)

$10,054

$171,546,643

3

Wonder

$22,300,000 (-19%)

$7,030

$69,440,202

4

Thor: Ragnarok

$16,791,000 (-22%)

$5,118

$277,468,394

5

Daddy’s Home 2

$13,250,000 (-8%)

$3,766

$72,662,166

6

Murder on the Orient Express

$13,000,000 (-5%)

$4,124

$74,246,517

7

The Star

$6,875,000 (-30%)

$2,423

$22,030,988

8

A Bad Moms Christmas

$5,010,000 (-28%)

$2,173

$59,754,557

9

Roman J. Israel, Esq.

$4,515,000 (+7,182%)

$2,705

$6,274,277

10

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

$4,400,000 (+299%)

$7,166

$7,624,070

$49 million is on the smaller side of Pixar’s opening weekends. (It’s about $4 million shy of Cars 3’s debut earlier this year.) But the film has also garnered strong reviews and an A+ CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences, suggesting Coco could have a long and healthy life in multiplexes through the entire holiday season. It also had the fourth-largest opening Thanksgiving weekend in history.

The news isn’t quite as good for Justice League, which dipped 56 percent in its second weekend in theaters. After ten days of release, it’s grossed $171.5 million and another $309 million overseas. It still needs to earn another $120 million domestically and $187 million worldwide to climb out of the hole of being the lowest grossing movie in the DC Extended Universe, a title currently held by the DCEU’s first film, Man of Steel. That is ... not great.

The rest of the top five were older titles that held strong over the holiday weekend. Wonder, with Julia Roberts and Jacob Tremblay dipped just 19 percent; Thor: Ragnarok, the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe entry, dipped 22 percent; and Daddy’s Home 2, a clear favorite with family audiences over Thanksgiving, dropped just eight percent.

Arthouses were busy over the holiday weekend as well, with the biggest winner being Call Me By Your Name, the critically acclaimed gay romance starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer, which earned a whopping $404,000 on just four screens around the country. The Winston Churchill biopic Darkest Hour did well in its first weekend in theaters as well, grossing $44,000 per screen in its four locations nationwide. And fall favorites Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Lady Bird both continued to perform, with each adding about 500 theaters and $4 million to their respective totals.